Using neural-network soundscapes to protect natural environments - <AUTHOR> https://phys.org/news/2020-07-neural-network-soundscapes-natural-environments.html <comment><USER2> "such systems could be deployed around the globe as a means of assisting land managers with detecting illegal activities in real-time."

I doubt the problem is in detecting illegal activities harming the environment.

And deploying iot devices across million km, I highly doubt this is economically viable, even if the devices cost nothing, deploying them would be a huge investment.

Surely satellites can already do a decent job of detecting illegal activities, at scale. Research funding continues going downhill with non sensical investments.

</comment><comment><USER3> This would be very useful for illegal mining activities as well.

</comment><comment><USER4> I've heard of this concept some years ago, but can't recall where from at the moment.

<comment><USER5> There was the same research done with Coral reefs [1] and I thought Oregon State University did something similar in forests as well. I can provide some reef sounds if you'd really like to hear :)

[1] [https://marine-conservation.org/taking-pulse-of-coral- reefs/](https://marine-conservation.org/taking-pulse-of-coral-reefs/)

<comment><USER6> Maybe you could put them up on bandcamp? A lot of ambient/soundscape composers use environmental sounds.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've wanted to do this for a few years.</comment>


What Separates a Generalist and a Dabbler? - <AUTHOR> http://www.sebastianmarshall.com/?p=438 <comment><USER2> _I love thinking on paper. In this case, I'm not going to go back and edit this entry so it looks like I had it all along. No, I'd rather show you my thought process._

Actually, I'd rather read a well-thought out argument that has been edited than trying to parse your thought process. I ended up stopping halfway through.

<comment><AUTHOR> > Actually, I'd rather read a well-thought out argument that has been edited > than trying to parse your thought process. I ended up stopping halfway > through.

Thanks for letting us know?

Seriously, the whole piece is 800 words. You didn't have time to read because you'd prefer 50 words shaved off with tighter editing... well okay, I understand if you're a busy guy that likes dense information.

But then you have time to post a snarky comment? You lost me there.

<comment><USER3> hvs did not say that he didn't have time to read it. Your writing style is simply horrible and incoherent and any sane person would stop halfway through.

<comment><USER4> That's unnecessarily harsh.

But I do agree that editing serves a purpose. There is a reason that good writers' essays, such as PG's, for example, are so durable through time: they have been finely honed, eliminating wasted words and poor analogies, to communicate an idea so purely that it captures the mind.

Sebastian's writing isn't poor. It's just not finished. There's a gem of an idea there, but it's still covered in the dirt and grime of poor syntax and wordiness. And like a diamond that goes unnoticed because it hasn't been polished, it will quickly be forgotten, under the massive heaps of poor syntax and crude wordiness that society, and the Internet in particular, generates every day.

He could find his ideas traveling farther if he polished his diamonds.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> How I interpreted this: a dabbler focuses on several pursuits with each given an orthogonal mindset, perhaps making inter-field connections, but only incidentally and post-hoc; a generalist has one goal and learns the skills of several fields in the pursuit of that goal, focusing on new fields _because_ of their connections to current work. Breadth-first vs. depth-first search, basically.

<comment><USER6> That assessment is itself often made post-hoc, though. The dabbler who hits on an interesting connection by chance is often retroactively written into history as a generalist who purposely scoured the world far and wide for that knowledge to connect to their project (sometimes people even convince _themselves_ that that's what they were doing all along).

Same with what makes one a "dilettante" versus "Renaissance man", I think: it's more or less a retrospective judgment, and the main factor is how much your output impresses people. The mediocre would-be Renaissance man is a dilettante, and the dilettante who does impressive things is a Renaissance man.

<comment><USER5> I agree, they're not that useful as descriptive categories for people who are still alive and working. However, I think they're good as _prescriptive_ categorical goals/mindsets: if you want to be remembered as a generalist, then you _should_ be striving to find connections outside the fields you're aware of, and then pursuing those connections where they lead.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It seems like you just defined the words to suit you. Personally, I would use "dabbler" to mean "a generalist who is no good."

<comment><AUTHOR> > I don't really understand -- it seems like you just defined the words to > suit you. Personally, I would use "dabbler" to mean "a generalist who is no > good."

Okay. If a generalist turns out no good, then why does that happen? Skill? Ability? Work ethic? Marketing? Their ethics and philosophy?

"Not shipping work before moving on" looks like the best explanation to me. If you have an alternative take, I'm all ears. I'm not so sure on this one, and would really like to hear alternative points of view.

<comment><USER7> I think it probably happens because they are average people with a lot of interests. If you're a person splitting your time between ten distinct pursuits, you probably won't be much good at them compared to a person of similar ability splitting their time between two pursuits. To be good at most of them takes an unusually smart or hard-working person, like da Vinci or (I guess) Steve Jobs.

Who doesn't "ship", anyway? I'm a lousy writer, probably a "dabbler", although I care deeply about writing. I don't publish my writing yet. But I still sit around producing pages; I wouldn't even be a dabbler if I didn't! In my opinion, the difference between me and a "generalist" is that my writing sucks.

<comment><AUTHOR> > I don't publish my writing yet. But I still sit around producing pages; I > wouldn't even be a dabbler if I didn't! In my opinion, the difference > between me and a "generalist" is that my writing sucks.

But how do you know your writing sucks? You're obviously a learned guy who has a good command of language. If you published and shared your work with people, are you sure it wouldn't be received better than you think? Or maybe you'd improve in skill and ability from feedback and observation of your work out in the wild?

I find any discipline where I have deadlines and have to either ship, or a competition is coming up, or a talk must be given, or something where I have to deliver/perform on some level... I find I tend to get at least modest successes in those areas. The areas I haven't released work, I'm much less skilled/accomplished. Maybe I'm getting the cause and effect backwards, but I don't think it's entirely the case.

I know my writing changed (and I think, improved) a lot when I started writing publicly than when I wrote privately. It's... it's incredibly different, y'know? It sucks and it's hard and sometimes people say mean things about you, but in the end the real downside is quite low, and the upside seems quite high. And maybe your work is better than you give it credit for? Derek Sivers just wrote a really brilliant piece called "Obvious to You. Amazing to Others" [1] about how people systematically undervalue their own knowledge/skills/ability. Something like that at work, maybe?

[1] <http://sivers.org/obvious>

<comment><USER7> Well, I agree with all your points -- people definitely improve at things quickly by being under pressure to deliver, and by exposing themselves to critical feedback. So perhaps the set of good people and the set of people who ship converge until they are identical, anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've always looked at it this way: Dabblers are never _really_ dabblers. I, for example, dabble in Rails, but I'm a real expert in math based marketing and database stuff ("Market Intelligence", "Business Intelligence", "Analytics"). When I play with Rails, everyone around me just assumes that all I do is dabble, but I don't. I'm building up valuable knowledge that I can apply at an opportune time during my expert level focus elsewhere. Knowing that I can, say, split test with either JavaScript or server side rails code _does_ impact my decisions and suggestions.

Generalists, on the other hand, have reached a beyond-novice level of skill in multiple, seemingly disjointed skills, but they are able to pull it together to create new things. These are the type of guys that invent injections of ionic compounds into the blood stream to map out cancerous tumors. They have enough points of knowledge to come up with an idea that a world class tumor surgeon would never be able to suggest, even if they couldn't actually preform as well as the surgeon.

</comment><comment><USER9> _If you look at a Jefferson, da Vinci, Jobs – they shipped. A lot._

I don't think that's quite true. Leonardo was known to miss deadlines and abandon works; perhaps a better approach would be looking at how confident they were of their ability to produce varied things.

<comment><USER10> Also comparing Jobs to da Vinci and Jefferson, well personally I see them in different levels (both on recognition and impact of their actions).

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I don't think you can be just one. The work I've done solving problems gives me a generalist view, but I'm constantly dabbling; keeping my ear to the ground as it were for some idea of what the options are.

To that end a generalist has tangible real world experience with a given technology that may be applicable to multiple domains. A dabbler has a very cursory overview of the specific tech and is perhaps aware of some of the options and caveats that exist, but hasn't earned the bumps and bruises to be considered comfortable with it.

<comment><USER12> I think the idea is that being a dabbler first is necessary but not sufficient to become a generalist

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> First off, great post. But I think we improve it by simplifying. The word "ship" implies a certain type of formal software work, which I think is an unnecessary constraint on the concept.

Output is the key. If you are creating something, you're doing it right. If you "dabble" from here to there and never make anything...you're doing it wrong.

Output. Creation. Fruit. Those are the distinctions that matter.

</comment><comment><USER14> To me the difference is in intent: a generalist is doing whatever it takes, a dabbler is playing around.</comment>


How to make a self-hosted video livestream - <AUTHOR> https://drewdevault.com/2018/08/26/Self-hosted-livestreaming.html <comment><USER2> As I do some middlingly professional-ish video livestreaming--I run a three/four camera show most Fridays for the Boston fighting game scene, we're newish to streaming but it's one of the biggest locals in the country--it was natural to look into the costs of self-hosted streaming. They're pretty prohibitive. Data is either expensive (AWS) or bandwidth-constrained (DigitalOcean etc.). Running from local is likewise not a reasonable option, either because of bottlenecked uploads (yo, Comcast) or just because it's simply unsafe to rely on something like a consumer connection, even if it's FiOS, to upload a show.

I don't have a good solution to this, unfortunately. The biggest benefit to Twitch is that it becomes possible for fifty or five hundred people to find you; the algorithm can be your friend if you're lucky or good. The second- biggest benefit to Twitch is that if fifty or five hundred people come by, your stream is not going to melt.

<comment><USER3> Has anyone considered hosts like OVH/SoYouStart? They have unmetered bandwidth and are quite affordable, and can be even cheaper on Kimsufi if you're willing to compromise on the SLA.

Here are servers for around 40$/month with 250Mbps with unmetered traffic: [https://www.soyoustart.com/en/essential- servers/](https://www.soyoustart.com/en/essential-servers/)

Kimsufi is even cheaper with 100Mbps unmetered starting at around 5$: [http://www.kimsufi.com/en/servers.xml](http://www.kimsufi.com/en/servers.xml)

<comment><USER2> Of course; it'd be pretty shortsighted not to, yeah?

Setting aside OVH/SoYouStart's generally kinda crap support (and maybe it's just that I do devops professionally but even for my own stuff I expect _some_ support, not emoji shrugs and a lack of English), "unmetered bandwidth" doesn't come with a wide enough pipe. 250Mbps is 40 users at 6Mbps/user, assuming nearly perfect bandwidth usage. One of my weekly streams hits 20-25 without us having advertised yet; these are alpha tests/pre-production streams. We should hit 50-60 when we go for-realsies live, if not more.

The next step, then, is to build your own star topology to stream to users. And your own load balancing. All to, uh, not make money on it and to, uh, not have as good of an experience either for the viewer or for the creator as you do when using Twitch or Mixer or YouTube (I don't care how ~~fierce~~ your Twitter game is, a Twitch notification is gonna get you further than the hot tweets).

Companies are willing to burn a lot of money and make you the beneficiary. So, right now, I do, and I tend to think even HN types are best off doing likewise.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I am not so sure about using DASH. It's becoming a royalty source for the MPEG LA: [http://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/Editorial/Featured- Ar...](http://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/Editorial/Featured-Articles/The- Changing-State-of-MPEG-DASH-Royalties-How-Bad-Will-it-Get-115883.aspx)

FWIW we are using HLS for live streaming with a fallback of RTMP to Flash for super legacy browsers.

<comment><USER5> You have a good point here. I would question the wisdom of falling back to Flash, though. Native support of both dash AND hls in web browsers is terrible.

[https://caniuse.com/#feat=mpeg-dash](https://caniuse.com/#feat=mpeg-dash)

[https://caniuse.com/#feat=http-live- streaming](https://caniuse.com/#feat=http-live-streaming)

HLS can be done in much the same fashion as described in my article with [https://github.com/video-dev/hls.js/tree/master](https://github.com/video- dev/hls.js/tree/master) I might do a follow-up with the necessary changes.

<comment><USER6> Why not use html5 video? I actually don't have a good idea of the ven diagram surrounding the layers or overlap in functionality. Is there a reason DASH is necessary?

<comment><USER5> This does leverage html5 video, but without some help html5 video doesn't support live streaming. The browser expects all videos to be finite. This works by stringing together a series of finite videos indefinitely. DASH can also be used to offer different streams at various bitrates.

<comment><USER7> That makes sense. Is it really so complex that there needs to be a licensed technology?

<comment><USER5> Not in my opinion, no, but the MPEG group is notorious for abusing their patents.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Suspension of Parliament Unlawful - a0-prw https://edition.cnn.com/uk/live-news/boris-johnson-supreme-court-ruling-dle-intl/index.html <comment><AUTHOR> Note: this was discussed in [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21058107](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21058107) but seemed to get flagged down pretty quickly

</comment><comment><USER2> Can you to elaborate why this should be on the front page of a website that calls itself "Hacker News"?

<comment><USER3> The only technical angle I can think of was the sound problems - heavy rain meant that the opening part of the judgement couldn't be heard

<comment><USER2> Or maybe the transmission was hacked? Or even better, weather engineering was used to make it rain.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Read this before forming an opinion..

"Why Hasn't Brexit Happened?"

[https://www.claremont.org/crb/article/why-hasnt-brexit- happe...](https://www.claremont.org/crb/article/why-hasnt-brexit-happe..).

<comment><USER5> From scanning it, I think that's a biased text. Reason:

 _"The E.U. insisted on a guarantee, now referred to as the "Irish backstop," that after Brexit Britain would maintain a "soft" border with Ireland, an E.U. member state."_

The backstop wasn't the EUs idea, it is an attempt to find a way between the EUs "the EU border needs border controls" and the UKs "the border between Northern Ireland and Ireland shall remain open".

 _"there were proven solutions: non-E.U. Switzerland, for example, keeps its borders, travel, and trade open with four major E.U. countries. These problems only became "insoluble" when E.U. diplomats discovered they might be used to tangle up the Brexit negotiations._

That proven solution has Switzerland sign 10 inseparable treaties that solidly link Switzerland to the EU "the sum of which makes a large share of EU law applicable to Switzerland" ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Switzerland%E2%80%93European_U...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Switzerland%E2%80%93European_Union_relations#Treaties))

If the UK had wanted a similar deal, they likely could have had it, but, among others, they would have to enter the Schengen area.

I think Switzerland is more part of the EU than then UK currently is.

<comment><USER6> It's definitely a biased site - Claremont is a conservative think tank.</comment></comment></comment>


Pre to postmortem: the inside story of the death of Palm and webOS - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2012/6/5/3062611/palm-webos-hp-inside-story-pre-postmortem

<comment><USER2> I can't believe this isn't on the homepage. Such a great story of clash of 'the doers' on one side and poor management and no vision on the other side.

<comment><USER3> I am with you on this!! I can't believe everyone isn't ready this!!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Anyone feel pretty depressed after reading this? Literally everything that could go wrong, went wrong.

Absolutely fantastic reporting by The Verge here.</comment>


How Great Stories Will Beat Ad Blocking - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/baldwincunningham/2015/09/23/how-great-stories-will-beat-adblocking/ <comment><USER2> What makes this so interesting is that its not coming from someone like a creative agency -- who of course you would expect to say something like this. The fact that its coming from a very data driven adtech platform makes it much more powerful.</comment>


Stop Measuring Everything - <AUTHOR> https://savagethoughts.com/stop-measuring-everything-8adb1118e0e5#.j0b6kqsfq <comment><USER2> The correct response to bad measurement isn't to throw up your hands and stop trying to measure. It's to get better measures.

Be careful about your measure. Check that what you're measuring actually corresponds to what you think you're measuring. There are a lot of good examples here, but the answer isnt' to stop measuring, to resort to "art" \- it's to get better at it.

<comment><USER3> Yep. It seems like they took the opposite approach to what they should have.

They killed their billboard campaign because their attempts to attribute the value of the campaign to growth failed.

They talked to a few people (got attribution) and learned it had a wider effect than their original attribution did. This is more data, not less.

It sounds like they should have taken a different approach to attribution in the first place when they moved from purely digital marketing to meatspace ads.

<comment><USER4> I'm curious if you or the parent have any suggestions for a problem I've been thinking about.

I've been building a search engine for standalone lectures ([https://www.findlectures.com](https://www.findlectures.com)). For me, the ideal outcome of being introduced to a new concept is that an idea sticks in my head for a while and won't let go, and I'd like to help people replicate that experience.

Are there ways that you could track something that gets at whether this happens for people, or is this so qualitative that the best option is to interview users?

<comment><USER3> That's tricky and I don't have any great advice. If you could find some tangible piece of knowledge associated with each video, then have a quiz after some time, that might help. Or introduce some kind of spaced repetition.

Alternatively, if you make the video categorization about what the viewer is interested in learning (that is, make the interface drive people to see videos based on what they want to learn, rather than having a hierarchical organization), then you can ask them later "did you learn X?" with some other survey like questions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The piece isn't terrible – the author has found the value of _qualitative research_. Yay! (I do a bit of that, so I'm biased).

The _title_ however, is wrong. It's more about figuring out how to measure the right things and not missing signal because of bad measures.

Open-ended, qualitative research is good at that because it helps the signal stand out – you can find unknown unknowns and then figure out _how_ to be more systematic in _measuring_ them.

</comment><comment><USER6> Money. You should measure money. everything else is just a proxy for that.

<comment><USER7> That's a very sad way of thinking.

<comment><USER8> Yes, it is. But let's also not forget time. It should be money/time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I don't understand this whole dichotomy between art and science. Or why people are so insistent that they are mutually exclusive. Science is an art, taking part in this myth hurts both art and science as a whole.

<comment><USER10> I agree. And most art these days involves quite a bit of science. Photoshop's image processing algorithms aren't just sloppily thrown together, for example! It takes a lot of science to make good artistic tools, and artists often do a lot of science when creating their art. (Checking audio levels, figuring out when the light will be just right, etc.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I think it helps to learn how to gamble or /play poker properly.

You'll learn what the poker players call "varience".

If you know varience (not patience) then over the long term, you aren't gambling. Or you are gambling but in a way if done properly that will make you money over the long term with 100% success.

<comment><USER12> Assuming you are better than the other players.</comment></comment>


The Möbius Gear - <AUTHOR> http://robotics.eecs.berkeley.edu/~ahoover/Moebius.html <comment><USER2> I was trying to view the description of the entire process (using this link [http://robotics.eecs.berkeley.edu/~ahoover/CS285/FinalProjec...](http://robotics.eecs.berkeley.edu/~ahoover/CS285/FinalProject/AHoover285FinalProject.pdf)) but I get a 404 error.

I don't know if this is only for me, but I found a report regarding this project here

[http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~sequin/CS285/PROJ_06/A_Hoover/AH...](http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~sequin/CS285/PROJ_06/A_Hoover/AHoover_Report.pdf)

<comment><USER3> I like this quote from the conclusion:

 _"The most important lesson to be taken from my experience with this project is that no single tool is sufficient to solve a reasonably complicated engineering problem"_

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> But I want to see it turn!

<comment><USER5> Have a gear cube as a consolation prize: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfspDCpVDTw>

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'd like to know where I can buy one, I don't have access to any 3D printers and I think this looks like something I'd like to have in my office.

</comment><comment><USER7> Looks like the 'planetary' gears should be conical instead of cylindrical?

</comment><comment><USER8> I saw the leading photo (no supporting text) on a disreputable image board last week. OP was asking what it was, everyone else was getting their minds blown. I went right to Google, typed "mobius gear" and found out.

The image did spur a few mental gusts but seeing it here a few days after seeing it there... mind blown.

</comment><comment><USER9> What are the applications of this? Or is that a blasphemous question to ask?

<comment><USER10> I know that Möbius _strips_ have applications in real engines. Fanbelts for example are möbius strips because they get worn equally over the whole surface that way.

Perhaps there could be a similar use case for a gear like this,but I have never heard of any.

<comment><USER11> Usually gears have a prime number of teeth on the cogs involved if possible, and different prime numbers at that.

This ensures that wear is even which helps with the longevity of the parts and also ensures smooth-running as there will be no uneven wear on one part of a cog. Another side effect is to spread oil evenly across all teeth in a reasonably short running time.

I cannot see how a mobius gear would offer any significant benefits over this. Most cogs are already machined to fit each other neatly, and the problem with fan belts (uneven wear) doesn't really apply to gears.

<comment><USER12> Why would a prime number of teeth be beneficial? Every full rotation, all _n_ teeth should have the same amount of wear.

<comment><USER9> It's a cool insight that I just learned, but if the two gears share a multiple, then the same teeth will engage with each other over and over leading to uneven wear pattern. If the gears are relatively prime (e.g. 6 and 17) then each tooth will touch each other tooth before repeating the cycle.

Try it out on a piece of paper and see for yourself (that's what I did).

<comment><AUTHOR> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coprime></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


How SmugMug uses Amazon EC2  - <AUTHOR> http://opensource.sys-con.com/read/590285.htm

<comment><USER2> Hasn't this been repeated word-for-word from MacAskill's blog post at [http://blogs.smugmug.com/don/2008/06/03/skynet-lives-aka- ec2...](http://blogs.smugmug.com/don/2008/06/03/skynet-lives-aka-ec2-smugmug/) ?

<comment><USER3> ditto... i'm like hang on a tic, this is old news.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I can't wait for persistent storage to go live, I think that'll completely change the way EC2 are used.</comment>


Ask HN: Best IP Geolocation Database or Service? - <AUTHOR> Hey HN, I'm building an app for a Client and I need a good database or service that lets me determine a users location based on their IP address. Right now I'm considering Maxmind GeoIP but I'd like to have something better, just can't seem to find it. I don't care if its free or cost money, the main thing is that its highly relaiable, regularly updated, and maintained.<p>Thanks in advance! <comment><USER2> At my company we use IP2Location (<http://www.ip2location.com>). They offer several databases with different data (from basic "IP-address to country" to quite comprehensive ones). You can get a DB as a CSV or binary file (in latter case the driver is required which also costs some money). The database is updated almost every month and you get free downloads.

In my home project I wanted to save some money so just bought the CSV file, wrote a tool that converts it to a binary representation (~1GB) and a driver (.NET) that can find records very quickly.

</comment><comment><USER3> <http://www.datasciencetoolkit.org/> may be worth a shot.

Don't know how accurate the data is or how often it's updated, but we've used it before without any issues. I will note though that the geolocation functionality was a secondary piece in our software, so we weren't really concerned with accuracy of the data.

</comment><comment><USER4> Is this just one of those "dumb customer requirements"? At least for me, geocoding-by-ip gives a result that is wrong by about 250 miles.

Why not just use HTML5 geolocation? You'll get much better results if the user grants you permission, and if you don't get that permission, you probably shouldn't know the location anyways... HTML5 geolocation is really easy to use.

<comment><AUTHOR> geolocation works good for mobile, but on the desktop its pretty annoying, you get a popup that you have to confirm which most users aren't used to, plus its javascript so you can't do server side stuff before you return your content (or in my case, redirect the user to a country specific version of the website for the online shop).

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> If you're writing it in PHP, you could install the GeoIP PECL extension (<http://www.php.net/manual/en/book.geoip.php>).

If not just use Maxmind GeoIP. I've never heard any complaints and its updated frequently.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I just went with GeoIP, it looks like that's about all there is. Makes me wonder, it seems like this good be a pretty good API service someone could offer, do it a lot cleaner more modern, better docs and bindings etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> We use <http://www.maxmind.com> for our custom abuse detection system (which is using geolocation as a signal).

</comment><comment><USER7> Check out <http://www.wipmania.com/></comment>


Ask HN: SaaS Distribution and Customer Acquisition - <AUTHOR>

I was wondering if anyone could talk about how they acquire customers for SaaS (B2B) companies as opposed to consumer (B2C) websites. Are there any viral or SEO techniques commonly used? <comment><USER2> Well, good SEO and getting brand recognition are important in any scenario (viral or not).

I think it depends on the type of B2B you are speaking, in terms of market size.

An enterprise business or government probably wont start using a SaaS application on an enterprise scale because they found it on google...the process is typically through RFP and the selling company will need to go through those channels. So if you are trying to bag an elephant it wont happen through SEO and viral only.

Now if you are counting small business (<500 employees) or even midmarket (<5000 employees) it starts getting fuzzy. The acquisition process is usually not that mature and sometimes it can get lucky as much as a top spot on google to get noticed.

For any B2B though, unless you have some great new way of getting noticed, your best bets are through typical business channels - cold calling, networking, trade shows, responding to RFPs, and so on.

I guess the viral version of B2B might be having the best spectacle on a trade-show floor or miraculously getting a nod in Forbes.

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't think you need to limit it to SaaS. There is a slight difference between SaaS and desktop applications, but from a marketing perspective, I'm not sure it is a huge difference.

I recommend reading up on Bassamiq (<http://www.balsamiq.com/blog>). There is a log of good information about how he grew his business.

Personally, I'm using Adwords and standard SEO techniques. I'm going after the small businesses. I don't see much chance for a viral techniques in my market. I going to experiment with some cold calling to see what the conversion rate is to see if it is a good use of time. I've started talking with a marketing guy and he has several ideas that I will try. No idea if they will work or not.

</comment><comment><USER4> One great way to acquire customers is by becoming involved / networking with others in the startup community.

SEO is crucial. Good techniques are all over the place. Make sure to target the correct keywords, etc..

Finally, consider creating an affiliate or referral program. It can be pretty inexpensive to get going and you pay for performance (signups or users).</comment>


The jaw-dropping engineering behind America's next world-beating supercomputer - <AUTHOR> http://www.eno8.com/blog/engineering-wizardry-powering-summit-supercomputer/ <comment><USER2> Not jaw-dropping engineering so much as a natural evolution by Oak-Ridge National Laboratory. They moved from a design using 1 GPU for each CPU to one with 3 GPUs per CPU.

Granted it's a lot of six GPU dual CPU units, 4600 of them. They're water cooled, but so is my gaming PC.

I remember attending a lecture given by Seymour Cray on the design and development of the Cray-1; that was jaw-dropping engineering. See [1].

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cray#Cray_Research_Inc._and_Cr...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cray#Cray_Research_Inc._and_Cray_Computer_Corporation:_1972_to_1996)</comment>


My first buffer overflow exploit: pretty easy - <AUTHOR> http://jvns.ca/blog/2013/10/28/day-17-buffer-overflows/ <comment><USER2> I highly suggest doing the labs of MIT's 6.858 (Computer System Security). I'm taking it right now, and it's one of the most rewarding classes. The labs can be found here: [http://css.csail.mit.edu/6.858/2013/schedule.html](http://css.csail.mit.edu/6.858/2013/schedule.html). In fact, the first lab is all about buffer overflows and return to libc attacks. All labs come with autocheckers or sufficient instructions to check your answers. The first lab can be found here: [http://css.csail.mit.edu/6.858/2013/labs/lab1.html](http://css.csail.mit.edu/6.858/2013/labs/lab1.html). Highly highly recommended to anyone. I wish more people knew about this class because it's class A, absolutely awesome. Very practical and informative.

</comment><comment><USER3> If this kind of stuff interests you, then you should really check out Phrack Magazine [1] (although not very active anymore). There was an amazing article from '96 entitled _" Smashing The Stack For Fun And Profit"_ [2], which gives a great overview of how this all works.

[1] [http://www.phrack.com](http://www.phrack.com)

[2] [http://www.phrack.com/issues.html?issue=49&id=14#article](http://www.phrack.com/issues.html?issue=49&id=14#article)

<comment> vezzy-fnord This is a legendary article that brought these vulnerabilities to the spotlight, but it's somewhat outdated by now.

You can read it for the cult value and as a general reference to have, but for someone really looking to get into it, I'd recommend Corelan's exploit tutorials, Open Security Training's courses and The Legend of Random's articles on reverse engineering.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the recommend reading, and for anyone else looking at this thread, here are the links:

Corelan's exploit tutorials @ [https://www.corelan.be/index.php/2009/07/19/exploit- writing-...](https://www.corelan.be/index.php/2009/07/19/exploit-writing- tutorial-part-1-stack-based-overflows/)

Open Security Training @ [http://opensecuritytraining.info/](http://opensecuritytraining.info/)

The Legend of Random @ [http://www.thelegendofrandom.com/blog/](http://www.thelegendofrandom.com/blog/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> You might enjoy one of my favourite time wasting websites of all time (Windows kind of required at times though but in the age of VMs that's a nonissue). The +XXX folks were basically my reversing education, makes me wonder if the identity of +orc was ever figured out :)

[http://3564020356.org/](http://3564020356.org/)

I really liked the hash-maze, cool idea.

</comment><comment><USER5> If you're into this type of stuff check out Smash the stack[1] It has a bunch of memory type vulnerability wargames (specifically the IO level) for your choosing. They start off basic, like the one you presented in the blog, then more advanced topics like heap overflows, return 2 libc, SEH overwrites, GOT overwrites, ROP techniques etc.

like WestCoastJustin pointed out phrack has phenomenal articles but require you to have a fairly strong understanding of C and Operating system type things.

[1] [http://www.smashthestack.org/](http://www.smashthestack.org/)

<comment><USER6> In my opinion, Smashthestack's Logic wargames are a lot more buffer overflow focused than IO ones. The first level php problem is rather misleading in that regard.

Smashthestack and overthewire both have a wide variety of wargames that might be fun to look into if you're interested in pursing security related challenges:

smashthestack - [http://www.smashthestack.org/](http://www.smashthestack.org/) overthewire - [http://www.overthewire.org/wargames/](http://www.overthewire.org/wargames/)

There's also an intro level CTF going on for another 9 days @ [http://zeromutarts.de/](http://zeromutarts.de/)

Registration is easy and instantaneous.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I have some equally simple, but networked examples here: [https://github.com/moloch--/Exploit- Demos](https://github.com/moloch--/Exploit-Demos)

</comment><comment><USER8> Another thing to start with would be unsupported software like Office XP or Win2000, most of which was created before the GS cookie even existed.

</comment><comment><USER9> Is it still possible to smash stacks with all these detections and aslr thingies going on?</comment>


Analogies in Product Management - <AUTHOR> https://www.timothybuck.me/blog/analogies-in-product-management <comment><USER2> "Using an analogy like a drunk uses a light post, for support instead of illumination." is still one of my favorite expressions. It really is amazing how often people believe that having an analogy is evidence something is true. Analogies are great for helping people understand each other, but they have to be one of the most abused rhetorical devices.</comment>


Yet another tool for making copy/paste/run experience better (Windows) - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/postprintum/devcomrade <comment><USER2> To the author: This is a really nifty tool. It's also great that it provides the ability to configure custom keyboard shortcuts. I will be trying this soon.

> Does the following sound familiar: you paste some text from a web page into > a Terminal command line, and it gets executed immediately, before you even > had a chance to edit it? Only because there was a CR/LF character at the end > of the clipboard text.

Oh yes, that sounds very familiar! As the description says, I use another buffer (it says notepad.exe) to re-copy the line without the newline and then paste. __________

 _Aside: Is there a similar tool for macOS?_

__________

The screenshot also shows a "Prevent Sleep Mode" option. I currently use an app called Caffeine [1] to keep my machine awake (and not automatically lock). I guess DevComrade could replace that too.

[1]: [https://zhornsoftware.co.uk/caffeine/](https://zhornsoftware.co.uk/caffeine/)

<comment><USER3> > Aside: Is there a similar tool for macOS?

I don't know the state of Windows terminal emulators, but it seems strange to describe the problem without mentioning the term for the solution, which is 'bracketed paste'. This article discusses how bracketed-paste mode is signalled using ANSI escape sequences, which I guess can work in most macOS terminal emulators (although it's up to the shell to respond): [https://cirw.in/blog/bracketed-paste](https://cirw.in/blog/bracketed-paste) . (I guess that Win+Ins is doing something similar on Windows?)

<comment><USER2> Thanks for this. I'll check out bracketed pasting mode in terminal next time (not near one right now), though I have to admit that even after reading that post, I didn't understand what exactly happens when it's used. I understood that the command does not get executed, but what happens in the shell (I looked this up on Wikipedia too)? Does it just display the line and allow the user to edit it so that the starting and ending escape sequences can be removed along with any other edits and then the command executed?

<comment><USER3> > I understood that the command does not get executed, but what happens in the > shell (I looked this up on Wikipedia too)? Does it just display the line and > allow the user to edit it so that the starting and ending escape sequences > can be removed along with any other edits and then the command executed?

My understanding is that it's up to the shell, or whatever program, to decide how to handle it. (I didn't make this clear in my original post, and have updated it accordingly.) All bracketed paste is doing is providing a mode that tells the program "everything between these two symbols should be interpreted as input, not as commands"; it's then up to the program to decide how it wants to respond to the user's intention.

At least for me, with Terminal.app and bash 5.0 (where it's not enabled by default), it behaves es you describe when enabled by `set enable-bracketed- paste on` in `.inputrc`. For vim, I _believe_ the plugin is essentially doing the equivalent of `set paste` before and `set nopaste` after.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> On MacOS, you can use Flycut ([https://github.com/TermiT/Flycut](https://github.com/TermiT/Flycut)) to manage your clipboard. Just assign it to cmd + shift + v and it will allow you to cycle through your buffers.

This is nice when you need multiple items from the same source (say login/password from password manager), instead of doing "copy ; switch ; paste ; switch ; copy ; paste" you can now do "copy ; copy ; switch ; paste ; paste". It's a phenomenal time saver and it will take care of the additional LF at the end, as well!

</comment><comment><USER5> When I copy a command to paste in the terminal I always start the selection from the end and move left to the start. That way I won't accidentally copy a newline.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> DevComrade is different from many similar utilities (e.g., from Puretext) in how it uses Win32 simulated input API to feed the text into the currently active window, as though it was typed by a person. For example, it works well with Google's Secure Shell App for Chrome.

<comment><USER2> Please edit the title of this submission with a "Show HN: " prefix.

<comment><USER6> AFAIK you can't edit the title of posts, only mods can.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> How does this compare to Ditto?

[https://ditto-cp.sourceforge.io](https://ditto-cp.sourceforge.io)

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a good question. I've been a long-time user of PureText, but somehow I've only become aware of Ditto's existence last week, when DevComrade was already in the works :)

I've got a quick look and Ditto seem to be capable of doing much more than I personally need, like maintaining the clipboard history (I use Windows' Win+V for that), sharing clipboard over the network and using its own scripting language ChaiScript. OTOH, I'd like to keep the useful functionality of DevComrade at the very bare minimum.

I'm also not sure yet about how exactly they do pasting, i.e., if they use Win32 SendInput. That may affects how well Ditto works with terminals and shells. Conveniently, they provide the source code (looks like it is a C++/MFC project), so at some point I'll come up with a better comparison and update the Readme in my repro.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Open URL from clipboard and Insert Guid seem pretty handy.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I've added "Insert Guid" merely as an example of how to bind a custom C# script to a menu item or hotkey:

<hotkey name="InsertGuid" menuItem="Insert &Guid" isScript="true"> <!-- this is an example of a C# scriptlet handler --> <![CDATA[ await Host.FeedTextAsync(Guid.NewGuid().ToString("B").ToUpper(), Token); ]]> </hotkey>

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> just what i need. thank you.</comment>


Ask YC: Can anyone recommend a good startup lawyer? - <AUTHOR>

We need to find a good startup lawyer pretty quickly. Anyone have any recommendations? Should be fairly straightforward stuff - reviewing terms, some legal advice, basic paperwork etc.<p>We're based in Europe, but the help we need should be possible over phone/email. <comment><USER2> If I could add just a piece to your question:

What experience does HN have with lawyers hired on Guru/Odesk/Elance? No doubt it's less favorable than having a personal relationship with an attorney your startup has on retainer, but have any of you used outsourcing as a strategy to lower attorneys' fees? What was the outcome?

</comment><comment><USER3> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34542>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16419>

<comment><USER4> This is why we need Search.YC. So much good, old information on the site falls into oblivion after two or three days.

[searchyc.com by chengmi and alaskamiller is a great tool]

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> If you're serious about what you're doing: <http://www.perkinscoie.com>

<comment><AUTHOR> We're serious, but very small. So I was looking for some personal recommendations of a firm/lawyer who has worked with smaller startups at a very early stage.

<comment><USER6> Perkins Coie is great. Wilson Sonsini is the premier firm in the Silicon Valley. I use both.

You will not get any free advice since it becomes a liability for them. Their rates might be out of your intended range but doing things right is worth the money.

Call the firms and see what they can do for you. I can recommend specific people I have worked with but the people you need really depends on what specifics you need help with.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Look at the presentation from SS08. There was some good advice n legal issues.</comment>


City lights on other planets could reveal alien civilizations - <AUTHOR> http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/102661-city-lights-on-other-planets-could-reveal-alien-life

<comment><USER2> It seems more than likely that most alien species would have eyes (or at least some sort of visual receptors), given their immense value. Yes, I know that other species could live on planets in total darkness, but I highly doubt that given that handicap, they would advance to the point of even a Kardashev Type 1 civilization. Maybe giant bats at best. Not discounting nature's ingenuity, only saying the most likely reality given all we know about life.

<comment><USER3> telepathy man. they don't need light receptors. they can read minds and see into the future.

<comment><USER2> Good point. I was thinking that too. Or was I thinking it? Maybe the aliens were thinking it for me...</comment></comment></comment>


Review my iPhone app: eyes-free dialing with SketchDial - <AUTHOR>

Hi HN, I wrote an iPhone app that would let me dial a phone number without looking down at the screen.  The original intent was for making it safer to dial a phone number while driving, but the trend seems to be towards outlawing any cell phone use at all while driving.  Can you think of any other situations in which it may be useful? <comment><USER2> I've already seen an app that does this, but it's probably better to have the app dial an existing number in the the address book using some unique gesture instead of actually having to dial the whole thing

it's called Gesture Dial

<comment><AUTHOR> Good idea - I may add this in the next version. In the current version, if the number you've started to dial matches a number stored in your address book, the full number will pop up which you can tap to select.

<comment><USER2> nice i'llcheck it out

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> link: www.sketchdial.com

</comment><comment><USER3> You need better design for the website and the app itself. I am a freelance designer, I can help you out. Email me at email@example.com</comment>


Greenland's melting snow makes new a hockey stick - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/12/no-equal-to-recent-greenland-melt-in-centuries-long-ice-core/ <comment><USER2> I was desperately hoping to read about the manufacture of a new kind hockey stick but instead the article is yet another metric demonstrating the accelerating effects of climate change.

I can only imagine that over the next few years articles like this will become the new normal. A group will decide to look at the impact of carbon emissions of something new and observe yet more evidence of what we already know. The planet is changing and we're to blame.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is definitively super fake information. Viking were cultivating barley there in 10th century. And the climate was to cold for that only after 400 years. Then there was 500 years of ice age in Grønland. We can state that the optimal conditions are soon restored thanks to Trump and global warming.</comment>


Ask HN: Getting into an embedded startup? - <AUTHOR> Throwaway because I tie my main to my real self.
I'm an EE.  I love embedded work.  I used to do it for a major non-software company, but I couldn't stand the work environment.  Because of the... sensitive nature of my work I had a lot of trouble finding a new job.  When I finally did it was with a small, local, non-embedded software company.
I really want to get back into it.  I have been out long enough that many companies won't even talk to me about these kind of roles because of my current one.  I don't particularly want to work for a large company anyway.
My overarching career goal is to start my own company in the hardware or embedded space, preferably with other people.  I don't have the network of people I need to find partners in this, though.  Thus, I'm considering trying to go it alone.  A nights/weekends thing would be doable, because my current company has a sane non-compete and has nothing to do with the hardware or embedded spaces.
As an alternative, I would love to be one of the first employees at someone else's startup.  I just had an interview with one, though, and was rejected despite the technical chops because "in our current stage and needs, we wouldn't be a good fit at this time".  I obviously disagree, but something about the way I present myself gives the impression that I am not early-stage material.  My pickings for hardware/embedded startups here are really slim, so I want to maximize my chances of success because I think I would be a valuable addition to any of them.
I figure a solo run, even if small and ultimately unsuccessful, would gain me more respect and attention from the types of companies I want to work for.  It might even solve my problem by creating the company I want to work for.
Am I misguided?  Clueless?  Nucking futs?
For context: I am in the Midwest.  I will not move farther west.  I would love to move farther east, particularly DC/Baltimore, North Carolina, or Georgia. <comment><USER2> I've been thinking this looks doable:

[http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2016/02/23/special- delive...](http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2016/02/23/special-delivery- ground-drones-ready-roll-england/80792992/)

<comment><AUTHOR> I heard a piece on NPR last night about robots in hospitals that perform a similar function. Certainly along the lines of some things I have been thinking about.

<comment><USER2> I'm wondering if running a remote control(cell network) robot on a sidewalk is illegal?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> [http://wocketwallet.com](http://wocketwallet.com) could have a potential need for an extra embedded dev.... Just throwing that out there if you're interested in chatting about it

</comment><comment><USER4> [http://hackaday.com](http://hackaday.com)

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm very familiar with and frequently read Hackaday. I'm more concerned with the _non-_ technical issues. As in, is trying to do something beyond the hobby level by myself realistic? Am I misguided for thinking I can parlay a startup attempt into an early-stage job?

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> I'm from Ohio what part of the Midwest?

<comment><AUTHOR> Texas. Not Austin, unfortunately.</comment></comment>


Introducing attr_secure for Rails - <AUTHOR> http://www.neilmiddleton.com/introducing-attr-secure/

<comment><USER2> To solve this problem when I store sensitive things, I use attr_encrypted like this:

Gemfile: gem 'attr_encrypted'

account.rb: attr_encrypted, :account_number, :key => ENV["some_key"]</comment>


The Perl Foundation receives $200,000 donation in support of Perl 6 development - <AUTHOR> http://www.perlfoundation.org/tpf_receives_large_donation_in_support_of_perl_6_development Good news for Perl and "chapeau" for Firebird Management LLC. <comment><USER2> This is great to hear. Perl has been really hurting because none of the important people are employed by big companies with lots of money to spend, and none of the big Perl users really donate much money. That means Perl6 has been strictly volunteer-only up until now. (There has been a bit of money, but most people can't just take a month off from work and live on a grant.)

<comment><USER3> It has felt kind of like the corporate support has waned a bit in recent years...and some of it (like scientific computing, which was momentarily a bright spot for commercial Perl) has gone elsewhere, like Python. I worked on SciPy and for its corporate sponsors at Enthought for a couple of years, and it was very interesting to note the difference between the two cultures and where development was/is coming from. A very large percentage of Python development, including development of the language itself, is happening within the corporate world, while Perl is almost entirely volunteer driven.

I'm not sure the volunteer nature is entirely positive. Ruby, with the advent of the extremely commercially oriented Ruby on Rails, saw tremendous growth in a very short time. It takes a combination of forces to build products that are beautiful inside and out, and even the best Perl projects only ever really get the inner beauty going on. We've got more/better libraries than any other language, and yet, folks think coding in PHP is easier. It's a strange phenomenon.

I think what I'm trying to say is: The Perl community needs more great web designers. Oh, wait...We're talking about money and Perl 6. Right. So, having real money to get Perl 6 out the door faster is the definition of awesome.

Anyway, we're doing our part: We're sponsors of the upcoming YAPC, and plan to crank up our involvement (both monetarily and codewise) in the community by an order of magnitude over the next year.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is great news, congrates to Perl6 community.

Another question is, whether Perl6 will really be able to take off on a larger scale. I still have a feeling that it is coming a few years too late.

<comment><USER3> A few years too late for what?

It's actually pretty well-timed, I think, though a couple of years head start wouldn't have hurt. It's true that there are several Perlmongers who've jumped ship for Ruby (and I don't blame them--I wouldn't hesitate to do a new project in Ruby, as it's like Perl with all of the rusty nails polished away) or Smalltalk or Haskell or whatever. But, I think the Parrot+Perl6 effort is still interesting, and still quite viable.

The thing is, it's only been in the past two years that _anyone_ thought to put dynamic languages onto a "generic" VM like CLR or JVM. Given that both tend to fight dynamic language designers hardest on those features that make them "dynamic", this new interest across the spectrum is a great place for Perl6 and Parrot to grow up.

Here's the thing...The JVM is awesome as a platform for new languages because of its huge library--one can build a new language from scratch while avoiding the biggest burden developers using new languages face, which is a dearth of libraries. That's the one redeeming thing about Java, is its incredibly huge library.

But, here's the kicker: Perl has even broader library coverage than Java (unbelievable as it may sound, if you're unfamiliar with CPAN--and it's probably the _only_ language that has more/better library coverage than Java). The moment Parrot becomes a viable target for production languages the folks working on Jython, JRuby, Groovy, etc. are going to at least take a look at it. And CPAN is going to lure some of them over. Not only is the library broader and more diverse, it is also already designed to work with a dynamic OO+functional hybrid language. Perl idioms are far closer to Python and Ruby idioms than Java idioms, and so CPAN libraries will feel far more comfortable and "native" to folks working with those languages than tying to Java libraries ever will--no matter how hard the language designer tries to hide the differences.

And, of course, Perl 6 has a lot of nice features, and the installed base of Perl code is larger than Python and Ruby combined (though smaller than PHP), and perhaps surprisingly, still growing at a rate of more lines of code per year than either. (That said, I suspect Python will catch up eventually, if the trend doesn't reverse, as its rate of growth is higher.)

<comment><USER4> Just to clarify: I meant a few years too late to be able to take off on a larger scale (larger scale == to be at least as popular as Perl5 used to be). Or in yet other words, the question remains if it will be as popular as Ruby or Python, which I think are its main competitors.

<comment><USER3> If it were as popular as Perl5 still is, it would be more popular than Python or Ruby. One has to be careful about how much the hype surrounding a language effects your view of its actual popularity.

But, you're right that a lot of new companies and projects are being started on Python and Ruby that would have used Perl five years ago. The two languages are also having more luck at stealing Java developers than Perl ever was.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: An Swift Ubuntu Docker Container - <AUTHOR> https://hub.docker.com/r/swiftdocker/swift/ <comment><AUTHOR> A few of us yesterday combined our Swift Ubuntu Docker efforts. The source is here [https://github.com/swiftdocker/docker- swift](https://github.com/swiftdocker/docker-swift) . We would like for this to be adopted as the go to Ubuntu docker image and perhaps more :). PRs are welcome</comment>


Creating a JavaScript object without the new keyword - <AUTHOR> http://www.davecooper.org/creating-a-javascript-object-without-new <comment><USER2> p2 is not an instance of Person. You also need to make sure p2's constructor is set to Person.

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting - how can I go about this?

<comment><USER2> p2.constructor = Person;

Without that, the object also doesn't have the right prototype.

<comment><AUTHOR> All fixed up now. Thanks for the feedback :) I ended up setting __proto__ directly so that an instanceof test passes.

<comment><USER2> Looks like that didn't work either and you ended up with Object.create which is a fairly new function. I think assigning Person.prototype (instead of Person) to p2.__proto__ would have worked. Or is that already what you had before?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Join the Coalition for Reform of Money Transfer Law to repeal the California MTA - <AUTHOR> http://blog.rongarret.info/2013/03/join-crmtl-to-repeal-california-mta.html

<comment><USER2> The "what and the why" are missing from both the page linked to, and the first link in the page. I define "missing" as "not easily found while skimming".

</comment><comment><USER3> it looks like its basically an anti-competitive law that requires a $500,000 license to be any sort of payment processor in California. The law was pushed through by a lobby group of existing big name financials companies.

some recent developments <http://www.aarongreenspan.com/writing/essay.html?id=86>

</comment><comment><USER4> Sorry, but why?

<comment><USER5> Because entrepreneurs shouldn't have to worry about federal prison just for thinking about starting a payments company (see proposed section 2155 of AB 786).

More reasons:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5308013>

<comment><USER6> So your plan is basically to take in a bunch of money from the public, and then steal it, and you object to the government trying to make that difficult for you to accomplish?

<comment><USER5> Actually, my plan was <http://www.facecash.com>.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Every Company Should Build a Second Corporation - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/07/every_company_needs_a_second_c.html <comment><USER2> Cute idea but perhaps the problem is the corporate mindset in the first place.</comment>


Stock-Market Myths That Just Won't Die - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB128000197220920621.html <comment><USER2> My hackles go up whenever I hear the term "myths".

Despite this, I think this good debunking.

Summary: Let the buyer beware. There are no short-cut to investing wisely. Don't buy without doing your homework, and don't expect certainty even when you've done your homework.

<comment><USER3> I read it more like "don't be a sucker, stock brokers want your money, why?, because they can't guarantee to make their own on the stock market and it's their job".

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't really agree with this article. Number 4 goes out of its way to cherry pick periods starting from a stock market boom as examples. This is not really relevant for today's markets because the boom has already passed and we are in a slump.

Number 6 is especially egregious. Think about the reasoning behind this for a second:

"The widely quoted price/earnings (PE) ratio, which compares share prices to annual after-tax earnings, can be misleading. That's because earnings are so volatile -- they're elevated in a boom, and depressed in a bust."

Are we currently in a boom or bust? If we were in a boom, then they might have a point that corporate earnings are higher than they will be in the future and that the P/E ratio therefore makes stocks look better than they are. But I don't think anyone can say that we are in a boom. We are instead in a very serious recession. So the above paragraph would mean that the P/E ratio actually underestimates the values of stock which means that stocks are even better buys than they would initially seem.

I don't know why the WSJ seeks to deflate demand for stocks now when stocks are relatively cheap after trying to inflate and encourage demand right before the crisis when stocks were really expensive. But I would not trust their advice much.

</comment><comment><USER5> We have had some recent ponzi schemes here in Tennessee lately. It seems that one of my friends is being investigated now. I was talking about this with another friend and he said "I am starting to wonder if every investor who beats the market does it by cheating?"

The general theme of that list seems to be that you can't beat the market with much consistency.

<comment><USER6> By definition, an efficient market has all the publicly known information already encoded in its prices. Hence, even theoretically it's impossible to beat the market without doing insider trading, which is considered illegal and hence "cheating".

Conversely, if insider trading were considered acceptable, the market would actually contain _more_ information than was publicly accessible, and we could infer things from stock prices that we didn't actually know.

<comment><USER7> It's not impossible. Examples that prove this are outliers like Warren Buffett and Peter Lynch.

Just because the information is public doesn't mean people are interpreting or acting on it correctly.

<comment><USER6> No, even with a perfect market there will be, randomly, some people with significantly better luck than others ;)

Seriously though, crucial the assumption is a perfectly efficient market, and inefficiencies exist everywhere.

<comment><USER5> Sure, some people get lucky. Hence the "with much consistency".

<comment><USER6> Consistent luck is still luck, and Warren Buffett and Peter Lynch are 2 out of millions. Likewise, 0.47 of people who bet it all on black at the roulette table are lucky, but 0.47^N of people who bet it all on black at the roulette table are consistently lucky.

Seriously though, there are real inefficiencies as well, and someone like Warren Buffett is probably exploiting them rather than being really lucky. (Also, I hasten to point out that Berkshire Hathaway currently invests by M&A'ing smaller companies, which is considerably _less_ of an efficient market than the stock market, which is likely more efficient now than it was decades ago--and often, M&A'ing a company can be a value add.)

<comment><USER7> Consistent luck? Over decades and decades? At what point does the success become attributable to the person? Investing isn't really a fair comparison to gambling. Gambling is essentially random -- investing you're much more in control of how you do, especially when you make larger and larger investments.

Acquiring smaller companies is a relative term, they just bought BNSF for $44 billion. Berkshire rarely purchases smaller companies, they simply don't make a material difference on the balance sheet -- even if they do very well financially.

<comment><USER6> Did you read the part of my comment where I said Buffett probably gets better- than-market gains because the market isn't perfectly efficient, or that Berkshire Hathaway acquisition can be a legitimate value-add to the invested- in company qualitatively different from just picking the right stock? I don't think you're arguing in good faith if you ignore everything after the words "seriously though" in all of my comments.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: I'm writing an ebook version of the Tao of tmux - git-pull A couple of years ago, I written an intro to tmux (https://tmux.github.io/) inside tmuxp's (https://github.com/tony/tmuxp) documentation called The Tao of tmux (https://tmuxp.readthedocs.io/en/latest/about_tmux.html). I'm in the process of turning it into a feature book.
I am aiming for a December 23rd, 2016 release and am plugging away full time.
I make it available to read on the web for free at https://leanpub.com/the-tao-of-tmux/read.
The GitHub is at https://github.com/git-pull/tao-of-tmux.
For pre-ordering:
- The Leanpub page (updated on a regular basis) is https://leanpub.com/the-tao-of-tmux.
- Amazon Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01MG342KU
- iTunes: https://geo.itunes.apple.com/us/book/the-tao-of-tmux/id1168912720
Also I have a coupon for pre-orders @ $7.99 https://leanpub.com/the-tao-of-tmux/c/oBsI4y3o4quu.
So there are 2 other books available in the now. I prefer my style of writing about tmux and teaching, since I maintain a few open source libraries for tmux I bring my own perspective along. Also I'd rather stay away from publishers, again, I prefer a book that's available for free to read on the web, DRM-free if you pay, and not have to worry about printing :). It's my first book ever so I feel a lot of pressure to get it done right.
I'm definitely open to feedback and requests to add things. I feel a duty to make a really good book for the community. Any help to spread the word is much appreciated! <comment><AUTHOR> From [https://leanpub.com/the-tao-of-tmux/read](https://leanpub.com/the-tao- of-tmux/read):

> Does tmux persist sessions after restarts?

I suggest mentioning tmux-resurrect: [https://github.com/tmux-plugins/tmux- resurrect](https://github.com/tmux-plugins/tmux-resurrect) as this has made me far less grumpy about restarting a machine with many active tmux sessions. Save/Reload all your sessions, windows, panes, and layouts with a single shortcut key.

<comment> git-pull Thank you, I hear a lot about it. I'm trying it out this morning. That seems like a good recommendation.

[https://github.com/tmux-plugins/tmux-continuum](https://github.com/tmux- plugins/tmux-continuum) looks really nice as well.

I am interested in knowing any plugins beyond tmuxp / tmuxinator / teamocil that'd be worth covering in the book. [https://github.com/tmux- plugins](https://github.com/tmux-plugins) seems like a great resource.

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> >It was the days back when phones still had mechanical keyboards.

This should probably say physical keyboards. Mechanical typically refers to the ones that go clickety clack.

Edit: And

>our username's in the channel persisted in the chatroom list

this should say usernames instead. Hope you'll have a proofreader look through all of it!

<comment> git-pull Thanks for the catch, updated.

> Hope you'll have a copywriter look through all of it!

I'll likely put the proceeds from the pre-orders to a copywriter. I want the final copy to be best it can be.

I appreciate it!

<comment><USER3> If you are on the fence on professional proofreading due to cost, I think that a thorough review by a native English speaker (maybe a good friend) that is at least somewhat technical would be enough to correct a lot of the issues.

I find the way you write enjoyable, free-flowing and absolutely understandable, but there are quite a few instances of expressing things in an subtly unnatural way, which detracts from the otherwise great experience. Perhaps this isn't the best example (and some things are subjective too), but to illustrate what I'm saying:

> You'll even know how to show your CPU usage and memory via the status line.

I would rewrite that to:

> You'll even _find out_ how to show your CPU usage and memory via the status > line.

Or even better:

> I'll even show you how to display CPU and memory usage right at your status > line.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I use TMUX to split screens so I can edit nginx-conf and restart the server form the the same view.

That's probably the most basic usage for TMUX, but somebody please enlighten me, what are some 'advanced' uses? How much more than splitting screens is there? Honest question.

<comment><USER5> Slightly relevant: if you find yourself in vim and don't have tmux/are too lazy to open another SSH connection, you can use ":sh" to drop to a shell.

So for the nginx edit conf/restart server scenario you would:

        # vim /etc/nginx/nginx.conf
        <make changes>
        :sh                             # drop to a shell
        # nginx -t                      # check config, let's assume it failed due to a missing "}"
        # exit                          # go back to vim
        <make changes>
        :sh
        # nginx -t && nginx -s reload   # config check passed
        # exit                          # back to vim
        :q                              # exit vim
        #

<comment><USER6> Ctrl-z will send Vim to the background (though you probably can't be in insert mode).

`fg` in the shell will then bring the Vim session back to the foreground.

If `:sh` doesn't give you your command history and the same working directory, that might be convenient.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Can you pitch me one why I should buy this over: tmux: Productive Mouse-Free Development?

I shy away from preorders. Do you have a sign up list of when this is done

</comment><comment><USER8> If I can make a suggestion, the cheat sheet is kind of weirdly ordered. It would be helpful if ordered by action, or the actions were grouped together rather than sorted by the command. It is kind of weird that "kill window" is so far from "kill pane", and with things like "display time", "display pane number", and pane movements in between.

</comment><comment><USER9> Thanks for the preorder coupon :-) At work, I use tmux on cygwin so something to consider adding for Windows users install instructions. At home, i run it with ubuntu from crouton via chromebook. i get by with the basics which is so powerful and simple with vim over my time with screen and emacs. I look forward to learn more. Cheers, tony

</comment><comment><USER10> I've been using Gnu Screen for two years now. Could you please tell me the reasons why I should switch to tmux?

<comment><USER11> If you're happy with your screen setup, there's not _that_ much benefit imo, but I made the switch a while ago and have been happy with tmux.

Highlights for me: better support for vertical splits/panes, better mouse support, and more convenient scripting features (for instance, integrating xclip and the tmux copy/paste buffer).

It's possible that screen has caught up in the last few years, but I haven't followed its development.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Switched to Tmux from Screen for a while. One feature I missed most is that, in Screen, I can centralize the command prompt and hide the pane split lines. Anybody know how to get that in Tmux?

</comment><comment><USER13> Looks good, I will definitely give this a read!

By the way, I think the first section should be 'foreword', rather than 'forward'.

<comment> git-pull Fixed. Thank you!

<comment><USER13> No worries, thanks for your hard work! Really looking forward - pun intended - to reading it :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Purchased. For me tmux is amazing but I figure I only use the basics so far. Looking forward to reading this at the weekend.</comment>


MinUnit: a minimal unit testing framework for C - <AUTHOR> http://www.jera.com/techinfo/jtns/jtn002.html <comment><USER2> I would love to see how this compares to "check" [https://libcheck.github.io/check/](https://libcheck.github.io/check/)

<comment><USER3> minunit is 3 lines of code [1], two macros and an extern. and shows just how little is needed to put together a unit test framework.

[1] [http://www.jera.com/techinfo/jtns/jtn002.html#Source_Code](http://www.jera.com/techinfo/jtns/jtn002.html#Source_Code)</comment></comment>


Like slime for vim - <AUTHOR> http://technotales.wordpress.com/2007/10/03/like-slime-for-vim/

<comment><USER2> "- you start irb

\- you start a text editor (vim, textmate, emacs, …)

\- you do a few tests in irb

\- you copy and paste to a text editor

\- you clean things up in the text editor

\- you copy and paste back to irb

\- you make a mistake

\- you fix things up in the text editor

\- you hesitate copying and pasting, because it's painful now

\- you write some tests

\- you exit irb and run the tests to do your experiments"

Totally reminds me of those infomercials where people sprain their wrists trying to open a jar or crack an egg all over their kitchen.

<comment><USER3> And I also believe that the inferior ruby mode gives you a ruby REPL in emacs anyhow.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Should also mention ClojureBox <[http://clojure.bighugh.com/>](http://clojure.bighugh.com/>). It's a great timesaver if you want to test clojure.

"Clojure Box is an all-in-one installer for Clojure on Windows. It's inspired by the Lispbox: you simply install and run this one thing, and you get a REPL and all the syntax highlighting and editing goodies from clojure-mode and Slime, plus all the power of Emacs under the hood."

<comment><USER5> Comment parsing appended the closing angle bracket to the URL. Here's what was meant: <http://clojure.bighugh.com/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> To get a real REPL in vim: <http://code.google.com/p/conque/>

</comment><comment> k-zed The written method is old, but good. It makes VIM a usable Lisp environment, and it's good for any interpreter with a REPL. Recommended.</comment>


NTFS now supported in ReactOS LiveCD - <AUTHOR> http://reboot.pro/topic/20149-ntfs-now-supported-in-reactos-livecd/ <comment> vezzy-fnord I think a lot of people ignore the fact that the ReactOS and Wine projects have a symbiotic relationship. Work on ReactOS will lead to improvements on Wine, and vice versa.

So it's still a useful project for the common user, even if the final product of a fully functional Windows NT clone is still far from being realized.

But actually - there's another, even more interesting use for ReactOS that I'm surprised has yet to be attempted.

A lot of people seem to praise the NT kernel on an architectural level for its microkernel-like features and object system, but it's buried between the cruft that forms the rest of the Windows stack. A free software reimplementation like ReactOS could actually allow for people to exploit the untapped potential of the NT kernel by fusing it with other userlands. Think in the vein of GNU/kFreeBSD. Perhaps a FreeDOS one? Either way, the novelty value is certainly high.

<comment><USER2> I've been given the impression that NT's superior kernel architecture is why they are doing this. But they also want other people to care so they also try to get Windows apps working on it too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I love the idea of ReactOS but it is moving so slowly that I don't see how they can ever be a relevant alternative to Windows. Is my impression wrong?

<comment><USER4> That was my impression in 2011 already. Back then I wrote a blog post (in my then-much-worse English) with, admittedly, a bit of Microsoft hatred[1]. However, most of the points I mention are still valid, I think. Of course there have been new releases since 2011, but nothing exactly groundbreaking, at least in the eye of a casual follower like me. Relatively recently, they have run a IndieGoGo campaign and have made this[2], but to be honest (and I admit I haven't looked very deep), as a first impression, it seems it is more the result of web development, design and social media work, than work on the hard part, i.e. the operating system itself. It'd be nice if someone could clarify whether that's really the case.

As others have mentioned, perhaps the idea is to offer support for legacy software on newer hardware, when that software doesn't need everything Windows has to offer... but I'm not sure how big is the audience for that, if one takes into account that some of the need is fulfilled by running Windows XP in a VM, using Microsoft's own tools for legacy compatibility ("compatibility mode" has solved all the compatibility problems I've had so far, but then again, I'm not a heavy user of such functionality), or running XP on real hardware (isolated and where applicable; it's not like Windows XP won't run on modern hardware, except possibly due to UEFI, or the like, and in that case I doubt ReactOS is of much help either).

[1] [http://gbl08ma.com/reactos-will-they-ever-get- somewhere/](http://gbl08ma.com/reactos-will-they-ever-get-somewhere/)

[2] [http://community.reactos.org/](http://community.reactos.org/)

<comment><USER5> It is nice to see that ReactOS are still developing, but I think that their time to make a big impression was 7 years ago. The world has moved on from being a Microsoft-centric place.

Perhaps if the Chinese or Russians decided to use it as an alternative OS, it would have worked?

<comment><USER6> Considering the swath of (mostly pirated) XP installs still floating around China[1], I wonder if many of them would be willing to try this instead. Most of their apps should run just fine too.

[1] [http://www.pcworld.com/article/2103680/chinas-windows-xp- use...](http://www.pcworld.com/article/2103680/chinas-windows-xp-users-to- still-get-security-support.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The real benefit of ReactOS is things like security and support for legacy proprietary medical applications for hardware interfaces into medical devices that on only run on old Windows machines, that can't be updated anymore.

<comment><USER8> I wouldn't want to risk legacy proprietary medical applications for hardware interfaces into medical devices to be running on an API re-implementation layer that could easily be missing functionality, quirks and bug-for-bug compatibility.

<comment><USER9> Why? "Legacy" implies "not a moving target." If you know the software you need to run, you can QA your API compatibility layer until it works with exactly that software.

CrossOver Office (the commercial version of Wine) is basically authored by picking particular versions of particular software that they want to get working, and then treating them as unit tests to write code against. When the program works, the library works. No more or less is needed.

<comment><USER10> I think that the point is that using this method with MS Office is one thing. Using it with medical software is a whole other ballpark. Using the medical software as a black box and 'getting it to run' on ReactOS might not be up to the level of rigor we would expect for a device that someone's life may depend on...

<comment><USER11> _I think that the point is that using this method with MS Office is one thing. Using it with medical software is a whole other ballpark._

According to what an ex-coworker told me, you only _wish_ all medical software using Windows as an OS was remotely well maintained, tested, and vetted as MS Office.

<comment><USER10> Moving to a different platform with possibly unknown compatibility issues could trigger bugs in the code that were lying dormant.

For example, I worked for a company that was still coming across data corruption issues from time to time after a move between a platform where all memory was zeroed by default to Linux (where it isn't). Plenty of places were memory was allocated, and just used without zeroing it, and then jamming the whole thing into a database as a string.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I follow ReactOS and other alternative operating systems like Haiku and AROS to see if they made enough progress to use them to replace Windows.

I'd like to see them at a level where the average person can use a DVD or USB stick and install it on their main PC and get apps for it to do what they want.

They haven't gotten that far yet.

I donated to the ReactOS Indiegogo and Kickstarter campaigns, but they never raised enough money for the Community edition. One feature I did want to see was NTFS support so a LiveCD of ReactOS can run an Antivirus scanner to clean an Infected PC that uses NTFS.

</comment><comment><USER13> While I agree with other commentors that ReactOS in general is slowly becoming irrelevant, I do believe making NTFS a read and write file system via open source would be a useful addition. I did a hunt a little while ago for ways to read and write NTFS on Linux and Mac, and didn't find many options (commercial or open). The most common response (beyond "reformat!") was to just mount the filesystem in a windows box (or windows running in a VM) and share it over a network connect, which abstracts away the file system, though adds overhead.

(BTW: For mac, I found Tuxera and Paragon, and the "built in" non-supported approach to writing NTFS. For linux, NTFS-3G (with proper fuse support) was the go to, but I found corruption under load in my minimal tests, which probably reflect my setup and lack of experience more than problems with the software)

Have you guys found preferred ways to R/W mount an NTFS volume or partition or USB drive without having to do a network mount for Linux or MacOS? Could this work in ReactOS become the seed? Or is considered a solved problem?

<comment><USER14> Try ntfs3g, it works like a charm. [http://www.tuxera.com/community/ntfs-3g-download/](http://www.tuxera.com/community/ntfs-3g-download/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Nice, speed, memory and performance wise is ReactOS more efficient then XP or nlited XP on virtualbox or qemu? For example, if efficient you could run it on a cheap android tablet onder bochs, qemu or dosbox and use it as a workstation if lxde/xfce linux would not be good enough.

<comment><USER16> Runs smooth, but I had problems getting VirtualBox to connect to the internet, so I couldn't do any serious testing. Installation took less than a minute (not kidding).

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I've been seeing this project since around 1999 or something. It was listed on a page of emulators and open source OSes that I visited frequently. Glad to see that it's still alive.

</comment><comment><USER18> Is this infringing on any of Microsoft's patents? And if not, why is Microsoft allowed to collect royalties from Android OEMs who support the FAT file system?

<comment><USER8> It's quite possibly infringing, but it's unlikely to become a target for a lawsuit unless it starts making a lot of money or starts hurting a good percentage of sales of MS products.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Can readers of HN organize something in response to Equifax breach? - <AUTHOR> Petition to Congress etc? I'm outta water here, but the situation legitimately pisses me off and am wondering if this can be a tipping point toward a more private world. I would love the input of more informed people. <comment><USER2> Start your own credit rating agency?</comment>